Aspirin Alone Works Best to Prevent Clots a Year After Stenting

By Kelley Luckstein

After 12 months, giving aspirin alone to patients who have had stents implanted seems just as good as giving aspirin along with the blood thinner Plavix, a new study finds.

Researchers discovered that, after an initial year receiving the dual anti-clotting therapy, patients who went off Plavix and just took aspirin had the same rate of heart attacks and death as those patients continuing on the two drugs together…

"In general, this fits with current guidelines so it's not going to be practice-changing per se," said. Dr. Gurpreet Sandhu, an interventional cardiologist with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.